The purpose of this blog is to discuss and explore the mythical and metahistorical origins and development of the Aryan[Indo-European,Indo-Germanic] race and their metaphysical beliefs. This is a companion blog to Celto-Germanic Culture, Myth and History and Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen blogs.

Lascaux cave art

Sunday, November 09, 2014

Otto Rahn, Aryan Mystic, Scholar and Gral Seeker

In recent years the published works of SS officer and Gral seeker Otto Rahn have been translated and published in English. His first work Kreuzzug gegen den Gral published in 1933 was translated by Christopher Jones and published as Crusade against the Grail in 2006 by Inner Traditions. His second work Luzifers Hofgesind published in 1937 was translated also by Christopher Jones and published as Lucifer's Court by Inner Traditions in 2008. The only English language biography of Otto Rahn is Nigel Graddon's Otto Rahn & the Quest for theHoly Grail published by Adventures Unlimited Press in 2008. Rahn wrote other books but they have remained unpublished since his untimely death at the age of 35 in 1939. It is hoped that this may be rectified.

The circumstances surrounding his death are mysterious and open to conjecture. Likewise gossip about him being homosexual and part jewish cannot be substantiated and my readers will be aware that such allegations are often directed at those who espouse the Aryan cause. Allegations of sexual deviance and jewish ancestry were even directed wrongly at Adolf Hitler, all of which is part of the enemy's plan to discredit the messenger because they cannot eliminate the message. It is the message that is important, not the one who conveys it. This is partly why researchers such as myself never reveal their true identity. In the past I have been wrongly identified as David Myatt by numbskulls posting on an American white nationalist site even though Myatt (at the time) was a muslim and I a practising Wodenist! People tend to believe what they want to believe.

Regardless of any truth or lack of it regarding Rahn's ancestry and orientation it his work and his work alone that matters. I have read and reread both of his published books and are likely to continue to do so. They convey a lot of information which is of value to ariosophists and his second book Lucifer's Court is an etremely spiritual work. Critics often maintain that Himmler had a hand in directing the content of Lucifer's Court, even inserting passages that would be favourable to National Socialism but there is no real evidence for this. They also allege that Rahn made statements favourable to National Socialism in order to appease Himmler but again there is no evidence for this. In fact Rahn's Aryan sympathies are also to be found in Crusade against the Grail, authored BEFORE he joined the SS.

Here is an interesting excerpt from Crusade against the Grail:

"We should point out in passing that swastikas appear as a religious symbol on all the statues and altars of Abellio that have been found in the Pyrenees. (Swastikas have also long been a Buddhist symbol.) Even today, the stone portals of old Basque farmhouses display swastikas as a way to keep evil spirits from their homes and families.

"The fact that the Celt Iberian-Iranian Dispater-Ahriman exists also in Sanskrit under the name Dyaus pitar, in Greek under the name of Zeus pater, and in Latin as Jupiter, indicates the richness and intesity of the relations between the Aryan Mediterranean world and the Oriental world of Hindu civilization, its neighbor. All the priestly castes of the primitive Aryans learned Celt Iberian and Iranian dualism during the formation of the esoteric mysteries."

Between 1933 and 1937 Rahn appears to have changed his mind about Lucifer who in Crusade against the Grail he associates with the xtian devil:

"Jehovah is not God. He is the Antichrist; he is Lucifer."

Throughout his first book he associates the xtian church as being under the leadership of an evil principle, the demiurge Jehovah or Lucifer. Whilst Rahn is correct in his identification of Jehovah as the demiurge, the evil principle of the universe according to our view he is wrong to equate Lucifer with Satan, the Devil or Jehovah. By doing so he is showing the influence of his xtian upbringing.

By the time of the publication of Lucifer's Court he appears to have done a 180 degree turn on this issue:

"I prefer to believe that Satan's, not Lucifer's, armies stood before the walls of Montsegur to steal the Grail, which had fallen from the Light Bringer, from Lucifer's crown, and was kept by the pure ones. These were the Cathars, not those clerics and adventurers who, cross on chest, wanted to prepare the Languedoc for a new caste-their own."

So Rahn went from the concept of Lucifer leading the armies of the church against the Cathar stronghold at Montsegur to Lucifer being the deity of the guardians of the Gral kept at Montsegur! This discrepancy is generally not commented on by schoars yet it shows an interesting development in the belief system of Otto Rahn. Christopher Jones does make this comment though in his Translator's Foreward about Rahn's non-identification of Lucifer with the Devil in his second book:

"In the book Rahn does not identify Lucifer with the Devil; for him , Lucifer was the Pyrenean Abellio or the Greek Apollo-all bearers of Light."

Finally in the words of Otto Rahn:

"Our heaven is not Jerusalem's or Rome's Paradise. Our heaven speaks only to the pure ones, not to base or mixed-race creatures-but to Aryans, the noble and lordly!" (Lucifer's Court)